Revamped Shopproperty website launches

Online search engine for UK shop units

Propex has re-launched the Shopproperty website with new branding, state-of-the-art search engine tools and many other new features.

The site, shopproperty.co.uk, is an online search engine of available shop units in the UK. First launched in 2002, the website now has lists of more than 1,500 shops in the main high streets and shopping centres across the UK, with more than 100 shops being added each week.

Users of the site can now carry out searches using interactive location maps, with available shops being displayed visually rather than in list form. An 'intelligent' search engine will also return shopping centres to the top of any town search and allow centre owners to showcase their centre.

Each shop displayed includes a Goad Street Trader Plan, detailed street maps showing each individual shop unit in the context of its location and surrounding premises both occupied and vacant. Shopproperty is the only open-access website in the UK with this facility.

In the first quarter of 2004, more than 40,000 viewings of shop units, averaging 5,000 viewings per week, were carried out on the site.

Paul Marples, managing director of Propex, said:"We are delighted with Shopproperty.co.uk, which we believe takes property websites to a new level of design and functionality. We want this to be the tool that both retailers and agents want to use, rather than feel they ought to use.

"The price of listing is now less than putting up a letting board and with more than 80 per cent of retailers using the internet for property searches, we are sure Shopproperty will be a hugely effective way of helping agents and landlords let shops."

UK retail agencies including Cushman & Wakefield Healey & Baker, Churston Heard, Gooch Cunliffe Whale and DTZ all currently list properties on the site which is now considered the only online comprehensive source of retail availability in the UK.

The relaunch of Shopproperty is the first step in providing an integrated marketing service to the retail market. Later in the year, a new email marketing tool and database of retail information will be launched.